Move Your Email to G Suite (Google Workspace)

What is G Suite?

G Suite is a paid service from Google. It gives you Gmail, Drive and other tools on your own domain, such as name@yourcompany.com. Google renamed it Google Workspace. Menus may look a little different now, but the idea is the same.

The plan in three parts

1. Sign up and prove you own the domain.
2. Copy your old mail across.
3. Point your domain's mail to Google.

Part 1: Sign up and verify

1. Sign up for Google Workspace on Google's own site.
2. Enter your domain name.
3. Google asks you to verify the domain. This proves it is yours. It gives you a TXT record, a small note you add to your domain's DNS. DNS is like a phone book for the internet.
4. Log in to cPanel and open Zone Editor.
5. Click Manage next to your domain.
6. Click Add Record, choose TXT, and paste the values Google gave you.
7. Save, then return to Google and click Verify.

If your DNS is managed elsewhere, add the record there.

Part 2: Create users and copy old mail

1. In the Google Admin console, create a user for each address.
2. Open the data migration tool in the Admin console. Look for Data migration under account settings.

   

3. Choose your old server type, such as IMAP.
4. Enter the old server name and the old login details. Find these in cPanel under Email Accounts, then Connect Devices.

   

   

   

   

   

5. Pick the users and start the copy.

Large mailboxes can take hours or days. You can also copy with Thunderbird by IMAP.

Part 3: Change the MX records

MX records tell the world which server receives your mail. Google gives you a list of its own MX records.

Warning: Do this only after the old mail is copied. Write down your old MX records first, in case you need to go back.

1. Open Zone Editor in cPanel and find the MX records.
2. Delete the old MX records.
3. Add the Google MX records, with the priorities Google shows you.
4. In cPanel, open Email Routing and select Remote Mail Exchanger for your domain.
5. Wait up to a day for the change to spread.

Test

Send a mail to your new address from another account. Check that it arrives in Gmail.

Quick recap

• Sign up and verify your domain with a TXT record.
• Copy old mail with Google's data migration tool.
• Then change the MX records to Google's.
• Set Email Routing to Remote Mail Exchanger.
• Test before you close the old mailboxes.